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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3649 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

to the Central Coast to visit her son. That is what Bob Carr and Michael Costa are doing to the people of Canberra.

When I was at the Kippax shopping centre on Saturday morning talking about the train service I met a lady who has a knee injury and cannot travel easily on a bus or plane. She is a fashion buyer for a store and gets a train to Sydney of a morning, gets out at Central Railway, goes to the factories and things like that and then gets back on the train and has three or four hours in which she can do the day's paperwork. She can get out her calculator and her buying book and do all her pricing before she gets home. That is what these people will be deprived of. It will mean that that lady will have take an unsuitable, unsatisfactory, uncomfortable flight or pay for accommodation to stay over. That is not satisfactory.

The biggest thing about this matter is that the ALP government has cut out the popular morning service from Canberra to Sydney and the reciprocal Sydney-Canberra service in the afternoon. One constituent said to me that she thought that it was done in that way to become a self-fulfilling prophecy and the service has been set up to fail. We have gone from Chifley's light on the hill to being light on for concern for citizens. It is almost the case that there is a light on for Labor, but nobody is home. The federal ALP seems to think that Bob Carr is their light at the end of the tunnel. It is certainly the case that he is ensuring that there is not an oncoming train at the end of the tunnel.

Mr Latham, in his "light on the hill"speech on Saturday, also said:

First and foremost, Ben Chifley was a citizen of Bathurst. He believed in the value of localism-so much so that, even as Prime Minister of Australia, he continued to serve on the Abercrombie Shire Council. He believed in the importance of community and social solidarity.

But what of the successors of Chifley, the people who should hold out the light on the hill and have Chifley's laudable objective of serving people by doing good wherever they can and work for the betterment of mankind? Working for the betterment of mankind has gone out the door with Michael Costa and Bob Carr with the CountryLink service to Canberra. The people of Canberra, Goulburn, Braidwood, Tarago and all through the Southern Highlands are being disadvantaged in a major way by the failure of the government of New South Wales to do anything to address the maintenance on this track and the ongoing needs of public transport.

I do not know how many times I have read bleeding heart articles from Bob Carr about how we need to be nicer to our environment. We have a caring and sharing green Labor Premier who, when it comes to a bread-and-butter issue of environmentalism, that is, making sure that you have an active and viable public transport system, has just thrown it all away. There will never be a sustainable public transport policy for New South Wales and for the people of the ACT if Bob Carr and Michael Costa are allowed to replace CountryLink services with buses, which is what they plan to do in many places, but particularly in the ACT.

I am appalled that during this controversy, which has been going on since August, the people opposite have been silent. The Labor Party has been silent on this issue. The

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